Customizing your product data for Shopify Catalog

When your products are displayed on platforms such as Shop or through Shopify agentic storefronts, Shopify Catalog automatically structures your product data by consolidating variants and grouping identical items. This helps customers view relevant results with live pricing and stock availability. You can customize your product data by completing any of the optional tasks in the following sections of the Shopify Catalog Mapping tool:

• Product fields: Review which fields your key product data comes from, and change the sources that populate certain types of product data, such as the title, description, or category.
• Custom combined listings and Options: Group separate products that are variants of the same product, so that they're displayed as a single listing.

All stores can customize their product data for Shopify Catalog, but you might not need to make any changes. Shopify Catalog Mapping is most helpful when your store uses custom data and grouping logic for products, such as metafields, metaobjects, tag prefixes, or separators/delimiters in product titles. If your store uses these, then you can customize your product data for Shopify Catalog without affecting the product structure or data that you have in your online store.

For example, you might create the following custom setup:

• For product descriptions on product pages on your online store, you use a product metafield called Full description. In the Shopify Catalog Mapping tool, you change the source field for your product description to Product Metafields > Full description.
• You want to group certain products into a single combined listing using a Product ID metafield. In the Shopify Catalog Mapping tool, you set the combined listings combination method to be Product metafield, and you set the source for the combination method as Product Metafields > Product ID.

Note

Any changes that you make are processed with a delay, so they might not immediately affect how your products inform Shopify Catalog.

Considerations for customizing your product data for Shopify Catalog

Before you customize your product data for Shopify Catalog, review the following considerations:

• When you view the Shopify Catalog Mapping page, default options are displayed for how your products can be listed through Shopify Catalog. Default options are based on analysis of your store's unique product data.
• The Custom combined listings and Options sections are activated and displayed with default options only if existing combined listing patterns were identified on your online store for your products.
• If you've previously used Shopify Catalog Mapping, then you might get suggested changes for the method that you use for combining products and variants into single listings, based on your online store product data. You can accept or reject the suggestions.
• The Preview tab in the Shopify Catalog Mapping page gives a preview of how Shopify Catalog views and displays your product data. The preview isn't an exact indicator of how AI channels might view or display your product data.

Set up your product field source mappings

You can map different data sources to your product title, description, and category fields. Choose from product attributes, product metafields, or metaobject references. You can map only a single source for each field.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels > Agentic.

2. In the Sources section, click the icon for Shopify Catalog, and then click Review product data mapping.

3. In the Product fields section, take any of the following steps:

   • To set a different source for your Product title, Product description, or Product category:
     1. Click the relevant Source drop-down menu.
     2. Select a different source for the relevant product attribute.
   • If a message displays saying that some of your active products are missing a product field that you set in the Source column, click the message > Bulk edit products, and then complete the missing fields for the relevant products.

4. Optional: To view how your changes affect the Shopify Catalog listing for specific products:

   1. In the Preview tab, click the Product drop-down menu.
   2. Select the product that you want to view the Shopify Catalog listing details for.

5. Click Save.

Set up your combined listings grouping method and product option names

When you have certain products or variants that you want Shopify Catalog to display as a single listing, you can set a custom combination method and parameters in the Custom combined listings section.

By default, products are grouped for Shopify Catalog using your Shopify Combined Listings configuration. When you activate Custom combined listings, you must select an alternative method to build your product groupings. Any custom combined listings that you set ignores all of your Shopify Combined Listings app setup for Shopify Catalog. If you group products with unstructured metafields, then no preview results are displayed in the Grouping tab.

You can also select your product variant options and set the option names that are displayed to customers through Shopify Catalog. The option names that you set are used only for products that have the relevant options.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Sales channels > Agentic.

2. In the Sources section, click the icon for Shopify Catalog, and then click Review product data mapping.

3. Activate Custom combined listings.

4. Depending on your setup and the approach that you want to take, complete the following actions:

   • If there are suggestions available, then either click Accept, or click the 'x' icon to reject the suggestions.
   • If you reject the suggestions or if there's no suggested setup, and you want to set your own combination method and parameters, then click the Combination method drop-down menu, and then select the relevant product attribute that you want to use for grouping your products:
     • If you choose Product title, then from the Delimiter drop-down menu, take any of the following actions:
       • If you have the default delimiter usage in product titles, which is when there's no space on either side of the delimiter, then select your relevant delimiter type from the menu.
       • If you use spaces in product titles in addition to your delimiter, then select Other, and then enter your delimiter in the Value field.
       • If you don't include a delimiter in product titles, then select None.
     • If you choose Product metafield, then select your relevant category metafield or product metafield from the Combination metafield drop-down menu. Supported metafield types are single line text, product reference list, metaobject reference and metaobject list.
     • If you choose Product tag, then enter your relevant tag prefix in the Tag starts with field.

5. Optional: To add product variant options, and set option names that are displayed to customers, in the Options section:

   1. Click Add options.
   2. In the Option column, click the drop-down menu to select an option.
   3. In the Display name column, confirm or adjust the display name.
   4. Optional: To set additional options and display names, repeat the steps.

6. Optional: To view how your changes affect Shopify Catalog grouping for specific products:

   1. Click the Grouping tab.
   2. Optional: Click the Product drop-down menu, and then select a different product to view the Shopify Catalog grouping for.
   3. Review the products that are contained in the Additional products in group section.

7. Click Save.

Understanding product check results for custom combined listings

When you set up a combined listings grouping method and product option names, Shopify checks all your products against the custom method and parameters that you choose, and the following results can then be displayed:

• [Number of products] combined: These products were successfully combined with your Custom combined listings setup.
• [Number of products] left separate: These products weren't found to have a shared value with any other products based on your combination method and parameters, and the products were kept as their own separate listings.
• [Number of products] need review: These products couldn't be grouped because 2 variants from the grouped products have the same option combination.

If you have any products that are flagged for review, click [Number of products] need review, and then decide whether you need to fix any of the flagged products.

Group size limits for custom combined listings

Shopify Catalog limits the number of products that one group can contain. The limit depends on which of the following combination methods you select:

• If you group products by product title, product tag, or a metafield that doesn't hold a list of product references, then one group can contain up to 10,000 products.
• If you group products by a metafield that holds a list of product references, then one group can contain up to 1,024 products. Your combination method can also include up to 100,000 products in total across all the groups that it creates.

If your combination method creates a group that is above the product number limit, then an error message is displayed, and your products aren't combined with that method. The error message includes relevant information to help you resolve it. The same error message is displayed in the Grouping tab, before you save your configuration.